A distributed system hosts a plurality of programming interfaces managed according to a hierarchy of security policies. In response to receiving a request from a client to invoke one of the programming interfaces, the system determines whether the client is authorized to call the programming interface by mapping from an attribute of the client to a location in the hierarchy. The system calls the interface in response to determining that the client is authorized to call programming interfaces associated with the location. The programming interface implements the security policy that corresponds to the location.